The Reverend David Railton MC (13 November 1884 – 30 June 1955) was a Church of England clergyman, a military chaplain and the originator of the idea of the Tomb of The Unknown Warrior in Britain.

[1] Railton first had the idea of arranging for the body of an unknown serviceman to be transported back to England, and buried with full honours, in 1916, while he was serving on the Western Front during World War I.

A committee headed by Lord Curzon, the then Foreign Secretary, was arranging for an unknown "warrior" to be disinterred in France and brought to Westminster Abbey.

[5] On 7 November 1920 six, or according to other accounts four, working parties visited the battlefields of Ypres, the Marne, Cambrai, Arras, the Somme, and the Aisne, where units of the Royal Naval division as well as the Army had died: each party exhumed an unidentified body which was examined to ensure that it was British before being placed in a plain coffin.

Quietly and gradually there came out of the mist of thought this answer clear and strong, "Let this body – this symbol of him – be carried reverently over the sea to his native land".

[7] "Padre" Railton made his home in retirement at Ard Rhu, Onich, Inverness-shire, and was returning there on 30[8] June 1955 from Battle, Sussex, where he had been helping the Rural Dean, when he accidentally fell from a moving train at Fort William railway station and died from his injuries.